I ♥ SPAM

I was a little surprised, but then I saw the “Made in Hawaii” plate holder and realized they were talking about the lunch meat.

*whew!*

I couldn’t help but be reminded of our visit to the summit in April 2005, just at sunset, when I took this similar (but decidedly less cool) photo:

Atmospheric Optics explains why most mountains’ shadows look triangular when viewed from their summits.

I think the picture says it all.

This contrasted heavily in my mind with the tree trimmers I saw in Hawaii, where a guy would shimmy up a palm tree with a rope and a machete, then hack away.

I saw them rotating the crane to move the guy to a new tree, so I’m sure the mainland style trimming gets done faster than the island style… but then, we’re always in such a hurry here. Too bad we can’t do our landscaping on island time.

A week later, we spent Sunday evening waiting for our flight out of Kona Airport. (After a disastrous experience at LAX in which we arrived 2 hours ahead and got to the gate with maybe 15 minutes to spare, we showed up early for the flight home. But Kona’s much smaller and better organized, so it took us maybe 15 minutes to check in. There wasn’t even a line to go through security!)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on our Hawaiian vacation. I’m sorry it took so long to finish it, but hey, I managed (just barely) to beat the 6-month marker!

Usually it looked more like this:

Note: Our stay in Kona was April 4-10, 2005

We never made it down to South Point (the southernmost tip of the island), partly because of time and partly because—believe it or not—our car rental contract forbid us to drive on the 12-mile road out to the point! Supposedly it’s poorly maintained—or it used to be, and the policy hasn’t kept up—and they don’t want the wear and tear on cars that aren’t designed for it. As I recall, rental trucks and SUVs don’t have the restriction. This was the closest we ever came to it, and you can only barely see it way off in the distance.

If you look at the end of the spray near the visible point, then go straight up toward the horizon, you’ll notice that the sky-sea line dips downward slightly and there’s a faint darker patch of sky. As far as we could tell, that’s the promontory heading out toward South Point. Even then, we weren’t quite sure.

The southern coastline of the island is full of rocky cliffs. Add in the wind that flows westward over the island, and you get some spectacular spray from the waves. It seemed that just about everywhere along that stretch of coast there were little coves, foam, and spray launching dozens of feet into the air. It’s just so hard to catch with a camera.

One of the places we stopped was Punalu‘u Black Sands Beach. Black sand beaches form when lava breaks into small enough pieces for waves to break them down into sand. Unlike white sand beaches, where the sand is made up of coral, black sand beaches have a finite lifetime. Once all the sand is washed out to sea, it’s gone. There are green sand beaches on the island too, but we didn’t get a chance to see any of them except by looking out the window of our plane as it approached Kona.

There was a little shrub all over the beach that reminded me a bit of jade for some reason, though there’s really not much resemblance. A little digging in A Pocket Guide to Hawai‘i’s Trees and Shrubs, and I’ve identified it as beach naupaka. You can see it in the foreground.

While at Punalu’u, I walked out onto the rocks to try to get pictures of the spray up close. Unfortunately the camera’s delay made that nearly impossible. There was a time when the water came a little bit too close, and I backed away in a hurry trying to avoid it without twisting my ankle! This is the best shot I got, but it was often three times that height.

The view inland proved quite a contrast, especially with the cloud cover we had while we were there.

Oh, I may have mentioned this area gets a lot of wind?

The sign says, “Camping Area.” I’m not entirely sure how you’d keep your tent from flying away, judging by that tree.

Note: This trip was Thursday, April 7, 2005.

It didn’t look nearly so blue to us, of course, since our eyes were adjusted to it. Each window had a pair of cards with pictures of different types of local fish labeled with their names, and the entire trip was narrated by a guide familiar with the local marine life. They did a good job of steering so that people on both sides could see everything.

You can’t see it in this photo, but in a lot of places you could still see the wrinkles of long-cooled a‘a lava beneath the coral.

By the end of the dive, we’d gotten out to where there was mostly sand, and very little exposed rock, so there was hardly any coral (and not many fish, either).

Here’s a view of the submarine from the ferry after we disembarked:

The view of the shore was, as most views were, fantastic. Note the clouds blocking any chance of seeing Hualalai!

This last photo should probably have gone in with the post about exploring Kona: it’s the ‘Ahu‘ena Heiau, King Kamehameha’s personal heiau dedicated to the god Lono. This shot was taken from the pier as we waited to board the boat.

Note: This tour was Wednesday, April 6, 2005.

We were originally scheduled to go the previous day, but so few people had signed up that they decided not to take the boat out. We rescheduled for Wednesday, which freed up Tuesday afternoon for exploring Kailua and the hotel grounds (and a round of Puzzle Pirates for Katie). Wednesday turned out to be very windy at Waikoloa, where the boat launched.

The beach is actually a strip of sand between the bay and what appeared to be a man-made lagoon. You can see the beach off to the left, with the wooden edging on the lagoon. An autograph tree is in the foreground.

We walked up the beach, looking for the boat launch, and met up with one of the reps, who walked with us to the meeting place, then took our names, ticket info, and release forms. There were about ten of us (two more couples and a family, IIRC), plus two crew. The boat clearly had room for two or three times as many people. Sometimes there are advantages to going at the end of the season!

One thing I could not get enough of was the color of the water. It was a beautiful turquoise near shore, and a deeper blue farther out. I went through several desktop wallpapers after we got back, and finally settled on this view of the Waikoloa shore, with the western slopes of Kohala in the background:

You may remember the pog craze that hit in the mid-90s and vanished without a trace? Well, Pogs originally started out as bottle caps from a Hawaiian drink called POG—passion fruit, orange, and guava—and the crew was serving imitation POG (mixing the juice themselves). It’s not bad, though I don’t recall trying any brand-name POG during our stay.

We motored up the coast a while—we were both disappointed that they never actually set sail—and occasionally spotted another catamaran that, we were told, was run by another whale watching outfit. Eventually, both boats decided to head back south, looking for a mother, calf and escort that had been seen in the area the day before.

And so began the dance of two boats and a pod of whales, as each of us tried to get close enough to see without scaring the whales off. Sometimes we were closer, and sometimes they were closer. The calf was a real show-off, coming up to the surface, flipping, and even jumping out of the water occasionally.

This is where one of our camera’s limitations caused us major problems. Unlike a film-based camera, our digital camera pauses for a short delay when you press the button. If you’re trying to catch something time-critical—like a whale jumping out of the water 50 feet away—even if you react fast enough to hit the button, chances are it’ll be back in the water by the time the camera catches up.

We have a lot of pictures of splashes.

But we did manage to catch a few shots of the whales. This is the best one:

Note: This cruise was Wednesday, April 6, 2005.